Standing Up, Falling Down

Billy Crystal still looks mah-velous!

(2019) Comedy (SHOUT!) Billy Crystal, Ben Schwartz, Eloise Mumford, Grace Gummer, Nate Corddry, Jill Hennessy, Caitlin McGee, David Castañeda, Leonard Ouzts, John Behlmann, Debra Monk, Kevin Dunn, Wade Allain-Marcus, Kate Arrington, Mike Carlsen, Charlie Hankin, Nathan James, Hassan Jordan, Glenn Kubota, Kelsey Reinhardt. Directed by Matt Ratner

 

It’s not easy to make it out there. These days, it is not uncommon for kids to move back home with their parents when things don’t go their way in a career. I know I did that when I was younger; so did my own son. Most everyone knows someone who has been in that boat at one time or another.

=For Scott Rollins (Schwartz), that ship is on an indefinite cruise. After his attempt to become a stand-up comedian in Los Angeles crashed and burned, he has moved back home to Long Island – not the Hamptons part – with his mom (Monk) who is absolutely thrilled to have him home, his Dad (Dunn) who is disappointed and his younger sister Megan (Gummer) who trades acid-tongued barbs with him and is likely none-too-pleased to see him – her life isn’t going much better than his, although she does have a really great boyfriend (Castañeda).

Scott is 34 years old, with no direction in life and an uncertain future. Although his mom is pushing him in the direction of a post office job – which he is absolutely against – he doesn’t really have much in the way of a plan B. He is pining over his ex-fiancée Becky (Mumford) whom he left to go to the West Coast for. She has since married a mutual friend (Behlmann) and still lives in town.

>He meets the very drunk Marty (Crystal) in a bar bathroom; Marty is drunk enough to be pissing in a sink but not so drunk that his aim is off. He notices a skin condition on Scott’s arm and recommends a dermatologist. As it turns out, he’s the dermatologist. A more sober Marty treats Scott’s “stress hives” and the two develop a friendship.

Like Scott, Marty is damaged goods. He is totally alone and both of his marriages didn’t go the way he wanted. His son Adam (Corddry) can’t stand the sight of him and Marty knows he drinks far too much. But as it turns out, Marty and Scott are good for each other and help each other out in ways neither one of them could have anticipated.

The movie doesn’t break any particularly new ground; the concept of a thirty-something year old kid returning home in failure to his folks’ house has been done a number of times. There aren’t a whole lot of emotional highs and lows here although to be fair the ones that are here are handled well, particularly a scene between Marty and his son late in the film.

What the movie has in spades is charm which is mainly due to the casting. All of the actors, from Parks and Recreation vet Schwartz to the legendary Crystal all exude it and Ratner wisely lets them do their thing. In particular, Crystal is outstanding. This is some of his best work since his SNL days; it’s wonderful to see him display his impressive talent and screen presence again. He’ll be 72 in March but he’s still as funny as he ever was.

Schwartz, not so much. His stand-up routines are kind of flat, even when he’s supposedly killing it; there’s a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes a stand-up funny here. The filmmakers might have been better served picking a different occupation for Scott. However, to be fair, Schwartz has some screen presence and charisma going for him and even if his stand-up material doesn’t work so well, he does a commendable job in his role.

=Definitely, the attraction here is Crystal and fans of his should flock to see this. It is available on the major streaming services now with more to come I’m sure, and at the same time it is making a brief theatrical run including here at the Old Mill Theater in the Villages for those who would prefer to see this on the big screen. This isn’t going to be a movie you can’t live without, but it has enough warmth to make it worth your while.

REASONS TO SEE: There’s enough charm here to see the picture through. One of Crystal’s best performances ever.
REASONS TO AVOID: Is a little bit formulaic. Has a been there done that feel
FAMILY VALUES: There is more than a little profanity and some drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The crash scene into the pizza parlor was so well-staged that residents in Long Island called the police.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/25/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 85% positive reviews: Metacritic: 69/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Comedian (2017)
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Nobody’s Fool

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This is Where I Leave You

A rooftop tete-a-tete.

(2014) Dramedy (Warner Brothers) Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Jane Fonda, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, Debra Monk, Abigail Spencer, Ben Schwartz, Aaron Lazar, Cade Lappin, Will Swenson, Carol Schultz, Kevin McCormick, Olivia Oguma, Beth Leavel, Carly Brooke Pearlstein. Directed by Shawn Levy

It is well known that you can choose your friends but not your family. Families can be a tricky thing. We may grow up in the same house, have pretty much the same experiences and yet still turn out to be different people. My sister and I were born eleven months apart but I’m sure there are times that she wondered what planet I’d been born on.

The Altmans are gathering for a sad occasion; the patriarch of the family has passed on and their mother Hilary (Fonda) is insisting that the four siblings and their families stay at her house to sit shiva – a Jewish tradition in which the family of the deceased sit in low chairs, host mourners at their home and say prayers for the dead – for seven days. It was their father’s dying wish, she tells them. When it comes to this particular ritual, they may as well have called it seven days in hell.

Judd (Bateman) is a wreck. He caught his wife (Spencer) cheating on him with his boss (Shepard) and apparently the affair had been going on for a year. His sister Wendy (Fey) is married to a prick (Lazar) and is saddled with two small children including a baby. She would have married the love of her life, Horry Callen (Olyphant) but a car accident left him brain damaged and he essentially pushed her away. She still pines for him though.

Oldest brother Paul (Stoll) runs dad’s hardware store now and is trying to get his wife Alice (Hahn) – who used to date Judd before he got married – pregnant. Finally the baby of the family Philip (Driver) is kind of the black sheep/family screw-up who is dating his much older therapist (Britton) but still manages to screw that up too.

They all come for the week, grudgingly. It doesn’t help that Hilary wrote a best-seller based on her kids and overshares on a regular basis. Also in the mix is Penny (Byrne), a high school sweetheart of Judd’s who is still in town. Everyone in the family, Judd wryly observes, is sad, angry or cheating.

I was surprised to discover that this is based on a novel. The reason for my surprise is that the film has kind of a sitcom feel to it, a dysfunctional family trapped in the same house together. Like a sitcom, the whole supposition here is that a week together as a family can cure all the troubles that plague the individual members of the family and make everyone whole again. We all know that when families are forced to stay together usually the opposite tends to be true.

Director Shawn Levy, who has a hit franchise in Night at the Museum, is not the most deft of comedic directors but he does have some touch and having a cast like this certainly doesn’t hurt. Fey and Bateman are two of the most accomplished comedic actors in the movies these days and Driver is heading in that same general direction. When you have Jane Fonda, Rose Byrne and Kathryn Hahn in support you must be doing something right as well.

Strangely though the ensemble doesn’t quite gel; it feels like a bunch of actors reciting lines more than an actual family. You don’t get a sense of closeness from anybody except for Fey and Bateman and even they seem a little bit distant from each other. Still, they capture the squabbling and occasional affectionate ball-busting that goes on in a large family quite nicely.

Of course, most of the family are fairly well-off financially (except for maybe Philip and his girlfriend is apparently quite wealthy) and the problems are definitely of the white people variety so that may put some people off right there. One thing that works about the family dynamic is that nobody really talks to anybody else. Not about the important stuff, anyway. When Judd arrives, for example, only Wendy is aware his marriage has ended. It isn’t until several days in when everybody wonders where his wife is that he finally blurts it out angrily. It illustrates the inherent dysfunction but then again in a family in which your mother has essentially paraded all your secrets out for everyone to see I can understand why some of them might be tight-lipped.

There are enough laughs to carry the movie along more or less and enough pathos to make you feel good at end credits roll, so I can give this a reasonably solid thumbs up. However, the movie is pretty flawed considering the talent working on it so be forewarned in that regard.

REASONS TO GO: Captures the dysfunctional family dynamic. Really great cast.
REASONS TO STAY: Somewhat manipulative.  Unrealistic “sitcom syndrome” ending. Ensemble doesn’t quite gel.
FAMILY VALUES:  Plenty of swearing, some sexuality and a fair amount of drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the source novel, Judd recalls a childhood incident in which he observes his mother exercising to a Jane Fonda workout video. In the movie, his mother is played by Jane Fonda.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/7/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 42% positive reviews. Metacritic: 44/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Family Stone
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: A Walk Among the Tombstones